25 Cent Rides Boost Youth Ridership

Target Audience: Winter and summer breaks haven't always been a strong time for youth bus ridership. After all, it's summer vacation and students generally aren't relying on the bus to get to school or even around town. Not anymore! A promotion that offered rides for just a quarter during school breaks, is pushing youth ridership to new levels. As part of the promotion, RTA encouraged youth to ride the bus to popular places like the beach, shopping centers, Disneyland, Angel Stadium and a spectrum of entertainment destinations. To ride for a quarter, students in grades 1-12 just needed to show a school ID from the most recent school year or other state ID showing they are under 19 years old. Sometimes the best campaigns are the least expensive ones.

Strategy Objective:With the goal of boosting youth ridership by at least 10 percent, our shoestring campaign was designed to attract youth riders with a simple message "You're Only a Quarter Away." Bottom line, we wanted to remind youth riders that they were only a quarter away from freedom to travel anywhere RTA buses go, anytime RTA operates. They simply needed to show their school IDs to qualify for the discount. In order to reach our youth riders, we brainstormed ways to reach out to this very specific audience. With the prominence of social media, RTA decided to contact them where they naturally hang out: Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. In addition to the social media efforts, RTA sent hundreds of flyers to regional school districts, community centers, libraries, summer camps, YMCAs, etc.

Situation Challenge: Public transit ridership tends to slow down during the winter and summer breaks when schools are out and families are on vacation. RTA is no exception. Traditionally, our winter and summer ridership can be up to 40 percent less than our spring and fall ridership. To improve our summer ridership, RTA targeted our youngest riders. RTA's Board of Directors authorized a youth winter promotional fare of 25 cents per boarding for all fixed-route buses from December 2017 through January 2018. The Board also authorized a summer promotional fare from June through September 2018. Our one goal was to boost ridership to reverse the downward trend. RTA spent less than $600 during the winter of 2017 and summer of 2018 on an online and social media campaign that boosted sluggish youth ridership by 35%.

Results Impact: The ultimate success of this shoestring campaign was whether or not we boosted summer ridership. When the campaign ended, we were pleased with the results. Traditionally, our summer and winter holiday ridership can be up to 40 percent less than our spring and fall ridership. That changed this year following our youth fare promotion when the decline was reduced to 26 percent in the winter and 10 percent in the summer. We believe that improvement was fueled by our summer and holiday fare promotion. So how many people took advantage of the 25-cent youth fares? During the winter promotion, our buses carried 17,196 youth boardings, up 30 percent from the previous year. During the summer promotion, our buses carried 190,000 youth boardings, up 10 percent from the same time last year.

Why Submit: The results were so positive that RTA is planning to make the 25-cent rides a regular thing during school breaks. RTA found advertising via social media is a very cost-effective avenue for reaching a specific target market. Our Twitter campaign resulted in nearly 60,000 impressions during the winter and summer campaigns with nearly 1,000 clicks, retweets or replies on the ad. Of the views, nearly two-thirds were male. Our Facebook and Instagram campaign resulted in total 52,000 views during the two campaigns, and 1,340 times a viewer was directed to our website. Half of the Facebook and Instagram views were by 13- to 17-year-olds. Roughly half of the views came from adults, presumably parents curious about finding rides for their children during the summer break.